Every day, more and more films are added to the various streaming services out there, ranging from Netflix to YouTube, and are hitting the airwaves via movie-centric networks like TCM. Therefore, sifting through all of these pictures can be a tedious and often times confounding or difficult ordeal. But, that’s why we’re here. Every week, Joshua brings you five films to put at the top of your queue, add to your playlist, or grab off of VOD to make your weekend a little more eventful. Here is this week’s top five, in this week’s Armchair Vacation.

Brett Ratner is an interesting filmmaker. Known to many as a rather deplorable hack filmmaker who has more interest in simply making money instead of anything resembling actual cinematic art, Ratner has become a punchline instead of a well respected filmmaker. And yet he gives us films like the Dwayne Johnson-starring Hercules. Not an origin story as much as a tale out of the life of Hercules, we see the legendary character and his gang of misfit warriors attempt to bring peace to a war-torn kingdom, only to have that upended by a king with offset goals and a twisted world view.

Craft-wise, the film is very much a Ratner film, in that there really isn’t anything that distinguishes it from, say, an episode of any TV series. Ratner is a “hack” filmmaker. However, what this film is is roughly 90 minutes that is taut, tightly paced, and beautifully action packed. It’s a really superb bit of cinematic pacing, and the performances are quite fun and truly enjoyable. It’s rich with thoughts on celebrity, and one can’t argue with a film that, in a world where any big budget film clocks in at well over two hours, comes in at a tidy 90-or-so minutes.

The debut from director Andy Goddard, this look at the late block of legendary poet Dylan Thomas’ life is a startling piece of work. The film finds Thomas coming stateside for his first tour, and Goddard’s narrative finds he and the man who has brought him across the pond, and the two performances really drive the picture. Starring Elijah Wood and Ceylan Jones, the film’s performances are absolutely top notch. But the direction is also quite great. Goddard’s direction is superb, an assured debut for the up and coming filmmaker.

With gorgeous, contrast heavy black and white and some solid costume work really helping to embed the viewer in both the era and the type of cinema this narrative is directly influenced by, the camera is a loving one, and yet one that does help add an ounce or two more emotional gravitas to the picture. Willing to linger on any charater at his weakest moment, much of the all too rare emotional resonance comes from Goddard’s direction. Ostensibly two character studies in opposition of one another, the film attempts to follow the trend of biopics set around a moment in one person’s life, but is unable to mine either of these men’s lives deeply as it attempts to do both concurrently. A solid, if emotionally cold, look at the dangerous, and yet purely human, vice known as hero worship, Set Fire To The Stars is a good debut film that will leave the viewer craving so very much more, having learned not quite enough.

3. About Elly(VOD)

Originally debuting on the festival circuit in 2009, where it won awards at festivals like Berlin and Tribeca, Farhadi’s film finally arrived in theaters this April, and while that lengthy break in between may leave you wondering about why exactly that gestation period existed, rest knowing that it’s yet another masterful piece of work from one of today’s greatest filmmakers. Often described as Farhadi’s L’Avventura, About Elly tells the story of a group of friends in Iran who take to a Caspian Sea vacation villa for what they hope to be a fun-filled holiday weekend. The titular woman is invited to tag along by a friend, with the hopes that she will hit it off with one of the groups available members.

However, while the men of the group are playing a game of volleyball, one of the children get too close to the water and nearly drown, sending the mood of the vacation spiraling down into a mess of accusations, lies and anger. Haunting and genuinely thrilling for much of its two hour runtime, Farhadi’s 2009-made film is a timeless meditation on the power of lies and proof that Iranian film may very well be the most intellectually intriguing in all of world cinema.

From Kornel Mundruczo comes White God, one of the more entrancing pictures of this still very young year. The film introduces us to precocious 13 year old Lili, who has her life forever changed when her dog Hagen is forced out of her grasp. Due to her pup being of mixed descent, Hagen is taken away from her and what follows is the beautifully told journey the pair take to once again be together. Pairing one youth’s coming of age with her furry best friend’s fight for survival, White God is an emotionally rich and unflinching drama that is both intellectually stimulating and genuinely rousing.

Hell, there’s even a chase sequence that could stand as worthwhile study material for action filmmakers looking to craft an interesting and cogent set piece. Despite being a prestigious, award winning festival darling, this film may very well get lost in the shuffle of the current Summer film season. While it lacks men and women in capes and cities being destroyed without much if even a blink from a viewer, Mundruczo’s brilliant return to cinemas has more heart, energy, action film brawn and art film brain to leave any viewer shaken at their core.

While it’s been available on VOD for some time now, Spike Lee’s latest unsung gem is now also available on Netflix, and is one of the best films currently available on the service. A remake of the beloved cult horror film Ganja and Hess, this is a nightmarish vision unlike anything we’ve seen from Lee. Lee’s picture is intimate and has an undercurrent of anger to it that is delicious to anyone willing to gnaw on it for a moment. Impressionistic and brazenly surreal, this is Spike Lee as we have rarely seen him.

Including a film like Red Hook Summer, it appears as though Lee, in this age of crowd sourcing and shoe string budgets, has found a new life, one of experimentation and breathless looks at the minority experience. An acquired taste, this is a film that will be as polarizing as they come. Stuffy and structured at a snail’s pace, this is an erotic horror picture that will have Jean Rollin fans buzzing, and Spike Lee acolytes aching to see what the filmmaker has up his sleeve next.

Over the last two decades or so, the art of proper rhetorical debate has been replaced with something closer resembling that of two chickens attempting to peck one another to death as millions of people decide that their one party’s pecks are patriotic. However, that wasn’t always the case.

Entitled Best Of Enemies, director Morgan Neville’s latest film is a love letter to a moment in time when there was not only a groundbreaking debate making waves across the globe, but a world where that was about to change forever. Now in theaters, Best of Enemies is co-directed by Grammy Award winner Robert Gordon, and introduces us two legendary intellectuals and their great feud. For a brief moment in the 1960s, there were few feuds as hot as the one between William F Buckley and Gore Vidal. During the summer of 1968, ABC was tanking in the ratings, and decided to take to the world of pure punditry for their coverage of both the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Enter Buckley and Vidal. One a king of the conservative movement and the other a leftist polemicst with a mean way with words, these two would forever change the way modern TV does political coverage, and are in many ways the crowning moment for modern on screen debate.

Aesthetically, this documentary is a powerhouse. Beautifully crafted and with a startling sense of pace, the film uses archival footage to really paint a picture not only of a nation on the brink of dramatic sociological and political change. Few moments in US history are as singular as 1968, and through these two and their series of debates, one can truly see both the beauty of rhetorical discourse and also the single moment where the US fractured into what we see now today. It’s is a superb achievement of documentary cinema, and it is just as dense as it is beautifully made.

The real joy of this film comes in the depth of discussion surrounding the relationship between these two men. There is some talk about how this pairing saved ABC as a network, and some about each party singularly, but the real intrigue comes in discussion about their relationship together. Be it their mutual hatred/respect for one another, or Buckley’s depression following one rather disturbing outburst, the film shines when we see these two men, on opposite ends of the aisle, discuss one another as rivals. There’s a vitality and an energy to this picture that is truly rare to see in modern non-fiction filmmaking.

Overall, Best of Enemies is a few different films rolled into one masterstroke. A character study about two polar opposite entities trying to discuss their points of view in front of millions, a documentary about one point in American cultural history and a study into the roots of modern punditry, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon have made something entirely singular. It’s tough to make a documentary about debate that is not either poorly paced or entirely intellectually vapid, and here they have not only made a brilliant thematic piece of work but one that is impossible to turn off.

It sure has been a hell of a year for the artist biography in the world of documentary cinema. With films like Montage of Heck, Amy and What Happened, Miss Simone, giving us a view of their central focus in their very own words, 2015 has been the year not only of boundary pushing documentaries like The Look Of Silence, but form challenging and introspective meditations on fame like the three mentioned above. Be it the audio recordings in Montage of Heck or the video founds in the Amy Winehouse picture Amy, we are becoming more and more privy to insights into our artists that one could never have thought of gaining.

And now the greatest film of the bunch is finally seeing a release.

Following very much in the mold of recent from-the-horse’s-mouth style documentaries like the ones above, Listen To Me Marlon is arguably the crowning achievement of this new movement of sorts. Directed by Stevan Riley, this deeply intimate look into the life of one Marlon Brando is like no documentary you’ve seen previously. After stealing the show at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the film is now available in theaters via Showtime Documentary Films, and uses audio recordings saved by Brando himself, to give us the story of his life, from his own mouth. Using this audio and some archival footage, the film is a gorgeous, intimate and almost impressionistic look into the life and work of one of cinema’s greatest actors.

When delving into the life and work of one of cinema’s greatest names, if not brands, it takes a certain voice to truly bring that legacy to vital, propulsive, life. Structurally, that voice is Brando himself. The recordings here are powerful and intimate, giving us insight into a man who has become almost a caricature now over a decade after his death. A master thespian and a leader in the method acting movement, Brando went from era defining turns in films like On The Waterfront to late masterpieces like Last Tango In Paris, all while becoming a voice outside the film world, on a myriad of social issues. All of this is discussed in great, and in many ways completely esoteric, detail via Brando’s recordings, a window into the mind of arguably the screen’s greatest actor.

Aesthetics, however, is this film’s strongest aspect.

Opening via a mixture of archival footage and a startling digital recreation of Brando’s legendary face as he speaks ostensibly from the afterlife, the film carries with it a decidedly singular tone and mood. Not a single talking head is seen here, just a man telling us the story of his life as remembered by him. We get discussions of his youth, his life after he broke onto the scene, and all the moments in between, however, it is his discussion of his craft that is the reason many will flock to this film. It’s startlingly lucid and gives the viewer a vibrant idea as to just how deep seeded he was into his craft and the real study of it. Much like the legendary Orson Welles, Brando has since become fodder for jokes as much as pure admiration, but this film is proof that he was as intense a student of his craft as he was a presence in front of the camera. It also doesn’t shy away from Brando’s eccentric side. We hear Brando as he muses about his first Oscar for On The Waterfront and how he felt as though it was undeserved and even the fact that he never truly settled down fathering roughly a dozen children. It’s a typical “warts and all” look at a life where those come as often as the sun rises, but goes about painting this narrative in ways we’ve truly never seen before.

Overall, Listen To Me Marlon is one of the year’s great cultural touchstones. Where a similar film like Montage Of Heck tells a story we’ve all become relatively well versed in, Riley’s picture gives us rare insight into an enigmatic icon. And it does so in one of the most resonant and powerfully crafted documentaries yet seen this year.

In a summer where worlds have been threatened by evil robots, lives taken by reanimated dinosaurs and heroes born out of men with the ability to shrink to the size of an ant, it may seem like the days of the low-key, small town thriller have passed us by. While this may be true for mainstream theaters and your local megaplex, if you dig just a tad bit deeper into the arthouse and VOD circuit, there’s one new thriller waiting ever so patiently.

Entitled Two Step, the film comes from director Alex R. Johnson, and is a decidedly low-fi affair. A throwback in many ways, the film finds a young man named James, at a crossroads. Recently kicked out of school for skipping classes, James heads home hoping to finds some support in his last remaining family member, Grams. Sadly, Grams passes away relatively quickly after his arrival in town, and while settling all her affairs he meets her neighbor, Dot, and the two spark a friendship. What sounds like a good setup for a small town coming of age tale is thrust directly into the world of pulp thrillers when we meet Webb, a career criminal now free once again. With a debt to be paid, it’s revealed that Webb has been milking Grams for all she’s worth, posing as James to take her money. From there the two find their worlds on a collision course culminating in a small scale, and arguably overbearing, thriller that is saved by some great performances and a deftly assured hand with tension.

The debut from writer/director Johnson, Two Step is a defiantly low-key thriller that owes as much to the Texas indie scene from which it has sprung as it does the hard boiled crime stories that it draws direct inspiration from. Exactly the style of picture one thinks of when describing a “slow burn” thriller, Johnson’s film is a beautifully paced thriller above all else. Told primarily through lengthy dialogue sequences, the film’s screenplay is punchy and gets some great performances out of its relatively unknown cast, but the real punches come via the brief beats of action and violence which are some of the most startling in indie cinema this year. They are rare, save for the final act which sees all the pieces come into play narratively, but when they occur they are never shied away from and really give the film a great sense of atmosphere and mood.

Performances here are also top notch. Skyy Moore stars as James, and gives a reserved but textured performance. His turn really shines when he begins talking to Beth Broderick’s Dot, Broderick being a welcome face amongst this unknown cast. She’s a talented actress, and one we don’t get to see enough of in films these days. Rounding out the lead cast is James Landry Hebert as Webb, giving a brutal, but one note, performance as the film’s villain. His turn is magnetic, but ultimately doesn’t give the film much richness narratively, instead coming into the narrative as as negative a force as he ultimately leaves the film as. It’s as empty a performance as the film’s score is a one note piece of composition, a manipulative piece of work that does hamper a handful of beats within the film.

A superb debut from a welcome new voice on the indie scene, Two Step is a wonderfully crafted thriller that doesn’t give much in the way of new life to the genre, instead treading some well worn ground in an emotionally resonant and genuinely thrilling manner. A deliciously taut and tense piece of work, this is a thriller that may be hard to hunt down, but will hopefully find a market on the genre scene through VOD channels.

Like so many great American films of the era, A Letter to Three Wives has a touch of trash at its core. Writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz crafts well-rounded characters, thoughtful explorations of class via small-town postwar America, and snappy dialogue to spare. But this is still a story that really kicks off when three women receive a letter from another claiming to have run off with one of their husbands, timed to a daylong excursion where she knows they can’t do a damned thing about it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all.

The bulk of the movie takes place in flashback, as each woman reflects on the more tumultuous moments in their relationships, and why each husband would be motivated to abandon ship for the highly-desirable Addie Ross. Addie seems to have gotten around often enough to have gotten around to those same husbands in some capacity. It’s a small town, after all. Everyone knows everyone; sometimes too well. The wives are Deborah (Jeanne Crain), Rita (Ann Sothern), and Lora Mae (Linda Darnell); a farm girl, a soap opera writer for radio, and a gold digger, respectively. Those designations paint them unfairly, I’ll admit, but again, such quick character sketches are inherent to pulpy romance, and go a long way to efficiently outlining character and conflict.

Deborah met her husband, Brad, in the Navy, where they were more or less equals. If only she knew she was marrying the prom king, diving fully into a social circle she barely understands, let alone is able to navigate. Rita and hers, George (Kirk Douglas), were high school sweethearts, and bicker the way people who have been together for too great a portion of their lives tend to – they mean it, but it’s all in good fun. She makes more at the radio than he does at the school, to boot. Lora Mae, meanwhile, saw Porter (Paul Douglas), a rather wealthy businessman, first as merely her way out of a house that shakes when the train rumbles by, but a few years of marriage can endear you to all kinds of people.

Now then, Mankiewicz (working from a slew of screenplays and treatments by at least four others; only Vera Caspary is credited, with the always-enviable “adaptation”) makes one untenable, but understandable, structural choice – we never see Addie Ross. She is portrayed in omniscient, catty voiceover by Celeste Holm, rather a lot to ask of someone who had already won an Academy Award (in 1947, for Gentlemen’s Agreement). She does a heck of a job crafting the idea these women have of Addie – her voiceover could be as much their projection as her perspective – but it still lets the audience thoroughly detest her without the natural avenue of empathy a face would provide. She can simply be “That Damn Woman,” allowing the women in the audience to fill in the blank with whomever has filled that role in their own lives. It’s a smart commercial move (and makes for good trash), but an uneasy moral one.

Otherwise, the picture is a pleasure, spectacularly well-detailed and full of good humor and heart. Everyone has something that makes them a little pathetic or pitiable – Deborah her awkwardness, Rita her desperation to impress, Brad his wandering eye, George his elitism; Lora Mae and Paul each other – but not in some grandly developed, tragic way. Just a touch of fault they can’t disregard, nor can they let stand in the way of loving one another. And these blemishes endear them; who hasn’t felt woefully out of place, or occasionally superior, or jealous, or had a touch of spite mixed in with unyielding love? And while the women in the audience may have some woman they passively hate to stand in for the absent Addie Ross, surely more than a few men see in her “the one that got away.” In the otherwise-safe context of a romantic drama reaffirming existing matrimonies, it’s nice to remember that maybe the road untraveled is best left that way.

A Letter to Three Wives won Mankiewicz his first Oscars (for Screenplay and Director, both of which he’d repeat the following year with All About Eve, which would additionally net Best Picture), and well deserved each was. Mankiewicz is understandably considered a writer first – so many words in his movies! And what words they are! But as David Cairns expertly outlines in the essay accompanying Masters of Cinema’s new Blu-Ray release, he hardly just sat back and watched his words brought to the screen. In addition to Cairns’s examples (which I’ll leave to you to discover on your own), I think especially of a beautifully-wrought moment of both blocking and cutting. During Rita’s flashback, her almost-painfully lowbrow boss reaches to turn on the radio to hear their latest soap, in the process breaking George’s rare Brahms recording. This was the analog era, kids – sometimes when that record’s gone, it’s gone. Mankiewicz and editor J. Watson Webb, Jr. (they knew how to name ’em back then) cut right as the record’s broken, and Douglas holds on the moment when his outstretched arm, too late to reach the radio before Mrs. Manleigh (herself acutely named) wrecks it, has to resist redirecting the energy to strangle her. It’s bad enough to lose a Brahms; to lose it to this woman is leveling. With this image, in this montage, Mankiewicz conveys a monologue’s worth. That’s direction.

The image quality in Masters of Cinema’s new (Region B locked) Blu-ray might best be described as “professional.” Not that this is a terribly dynamic film in terms of lighting or anything, but it’s nevertheless a nondescript transfer; if there was any damage at all, I never noticed it, and the film has been stabilized and rid of anything in the way of fluctuations. Grain is perfectly consistent. There’s nothing terribly wrong with it (maybe it’s a little soft), but there’s nothing really alive in it either. I am unsurprised to learn it is essentially the same master that 20th Century Fox used for their own U.S. Blu-ray release, as it has the familiar studio archive touch of total competence, but little inspiration. (screencaps courtesy of DVD Beaver)

MoC ports over Fox’s excellent commentary track with Mankiewicz biographers Kenneth Geist and Cheryl Lower, and son Christopher Mankiewicz. Though recorded separately, they’ve been edited so well together, and build off of one another’s observations so intricately, that you’d swear at times that they wrote, rehearsed, and performed the whole thing together. They also bring over a short archival snippet of Movietone News, with footage from the 1950 Academy Awards. They step up the package by including two radio adaptations – Screen Guild Theater and Lux Radio Theater – as well as a booklet with the aforementioned essay by David Cairns.

I hadn’t seen A Letter to Three Wives before receiving my review copy, but, based on this and All About Eve, can easily see what made Mankiewicz so popular in these years. Here, he really captured the sort of uneasy peace people had settled into with the war well over and their lives seemingly established. Neither tragedy nor comedy, it provides the kind of warm, cheering drama that can be recommended to damn near anyone who watches motion pictures. MoC duplicated the key supplements from the Fox edition, while adding a few worthy entries of their own, making it, to my thinking, the definitive edition of this American classic.

First starting in the brilliant John Schlesinger film Sunday Bloody Sunday, Daniel Day-Lewis has become arguably one of the greatest and most highly regarded thespians in the history of cinema. And yet he has only 20 credits to his name. For a craft that sees even the biggest of Hollywood stars sign on for just about any project that comes their way, Daniel Day-Lewis has become a genre defining actor on almost a part-time like schedule.

It’s not something new for the actor either.

Look at one of his greatest achievements, Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette. 14 years after his debut, this marked his first performance of any real note, taking secondary billing in what would become one of the definitive cinematic achievements of 1980s British cinema.

Penned by Hanif Kureishi, My Beautiful Laundrette stars Gordon Warnecke as Omar, a young man who convinces his uncle Nasser (Saeed Jaffrey) to let him manage a local launderette. Daniel-Day Lewis comes in in the form of Johnny, a childhood friend of Omar’s who ultimately becomes a business partner and even more so a lover in one of his great early performances, arguably the role that launched him into the stratosphere he’s been comfortably shacking up in ever since. A comedy, a thriller, a love story, a drama, My Beautiful Laundrette is simply a triumph beyond reproach.

Stephen Frears has, since this film, become known for pictures he made on this side of the pond like High Fidelity or Oscar bait material like The Queen, but during the mid-late 1980s, there were few British filmmakers pushing the boundaries harder than Frears. Very much a child of directors like Lindsay Anderson and other British New Wave auteurs, the film is at its core a rousing bit of social commentary and faux neo-realism. Ostensibly a comedy, the film is even more so a potent slice of social commentary that looks directly at the fringes of Thatcher’s England. A marginalized England, Frears and writer Kureishi have a decidedly potent hand when it comes to portraying the fire burning in the belly of these people who are being undone by the nation they love. It’s a powerful achievement that may be greater as a sociological exploit, but as cinema from this period goes, it doesn’t get any greater and more influential.

Aesthetically, the film is gorgeous. Possibly the crowning achievement of cinematographer Oliver Stapleton (who is still churning out films like this year’s Hot Pursuit), the film is lushly composed and the grain of the film stock really comes to life in this new 2K restoration for Criterion’s new Blu-ray release. Frears is at his absolute best here as well as a filmmaker, using his camera to thrust the viewer into this decidedly distinct and singular world. There are some frames here, particularly one involving a love sequence between our two leads that is shot opposite a dance sequence inside the laundrette, that really gives the film a completely original sense of style. The final act is powerful and emotionally resonant, particularly the final few frames, which is a finale you’ll really never forget. Frears has gone on to do studio Oscar pictures like Philomena, but this period in his career (this directly followed his masterpiece, The Hit) saw him not only experimenting with new ideas but saw him at his most assured as a visual artist.

But we’re burying the real discussion here. While Frears is at his very best here, the two leads absolutely steal the show. Gordon Warnecke as Omar is one of the real revelations of this film. An actor who hasn’t done much since, Warnecke’s performance is superb, really hinting at both the film’s emotional center (his relationship with Johnny) and its intellectual center (the discussion of marginalized groups in Thatcher’s England). It’s a performance that is trying to touch on many a topic emotionally and intellectually, and without speaking in intellectual exposition, it is a clearly drawn and lived in performance. Day-Lewis is startlingly good here, albeit a performance that takes a moment or two for new viewers to get in to. Something a bit more anarchic than what modern viewers are used to seeing from Day-Lewis, there is a lot to take from what is ostensibly the film’s emotional core. Rounding out the cast are names like Jaffrey and the beautiful Rita Wolf, two of the many great performances that make up the film’s supporting cast.

As a Blu-ray release, this is a solid, but decidedly slim release. The 2K restoration and subsequent transfer are glorious to view, particularly in the outdoor night sequences, of which there are many here. This writer adores the cover art, and the overall packaging is really a highlight. Supplemental material here is small on critical discussion (there is a superb essay from Graham Fuller), but there are interviews with Frears, Kureishi, Stapleton and producers Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe, whose company Working Title has become one of film’s most important, taking up a great deal of discussion on this release. It’s a great release of a brilliant film, and should be on the top of anyone’s list when it comes to must-own releases from Criterion in 2015.

To say that the world of fiction and non-fiction, in cinema, has become blurred is to grossly understate to which boundaries have been pushed. Fiction filmmakers are taking cues aesthetically from the world of documentary cinema, while non-fiction directors are slowly adopting fiction-esque narrative ideas, turning the form into something entirely new.

And then there’s Five Star and its writer/director Keith Miller.

Jumping onto the scene with the superb Welcome To Pine Hill, Miller is back with yet another intimate and neo-documentary style look into a section of the world many of us are not privy to. Miller introduces us in his new picture to a man named James Grant, but introduced to us as Primo. A member of the Bloods since the age of 12 (both here in the picture and in his actual life, hinting at the film’s mix of fact and fiction), Primo is now considered a main man in his East New York neighborhood, and with yet another child on the way, he decides to use that pull to take care of one of his own. Therein lies John, a boy who is on the brink of manhood. The son of a fallen mentor of Primo’s, John is falling more and more into the streets that consumed his father, and Primo attempts to change that progression. A moving look at the facing of past demons, Five Star is quite a superb sophomore effort from a truly talented young voice in independent American cinema.

Aesthetically, the film is in many ways a triumph. Miller’s direction is very much influenced by that of non-fiction filmmakers, but instills within each frame a decidedly fiction-influenced sheen. Take the sequence that ostensibly bookends the picture, for example. Primo is seen, seemingly naturally lit by the world around him, but just off of center of the frame. The photography here is a tad more rich than found in modern documentary filmmaking, but it isn’t without this distinct sense of naturalism that comes both from Miller’s direction, but also the fantastic screenplay. With regards to the direction, there is a particular sequence that is a perfect example of the film’s pushing of aesthetic boundaries. Primo goes to confront someone who owes him money, and after agreeing to accept payment in a few days, the men that went with him to this confrontation begin beating the other man. One would expect to see the fight proceed, but instead the camera very much turns away from the action, going as far as to ostensibly hide behind a corner in the tiny apartment. It’s a startling shot that is a perfect example of what this film is attempting to do.

The performances here are great as well. Both James Grant and John Diaz are fantastic, with this film being one of the few pictures that seems to truly “get” what street language is like and the percussive nature of its flow. Never a false moment, each performance here is rich, layered with a history that feels tactile and lived in. A relatively standard tale of a young man’s coming of age and confrontation of a past not known, Miller’s film truly shines in the moments Primo and John share together, and particularly a final showdown between both men that may read on its face as a standard finale to this type of film, but has such great emotional depth and richness.

Overall, the film has a narrative structure that feels very much rooted in tropes that we’ve seen on screen before, but what we rarely see are performances this natural and lived in, and a filmmaker not only this assured in his aesthetic, but this willing to experiment within that. A resonant drama, this is a more than worthy follow up to Miller’s superb debut.

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Jean-Luc Godard’s (sadly out of print) Pierrot Le Fou, Yuko Shimizu (The Samurai Trilogy, Topsy Turvy, and more) has designed a gorgeous new print which will be available to purchase from Black Dragon Press next week.

The posters will go on sale next Tuesday (July 28) 3:00PM BST (GMT +1 = 10:00AM EST in New York), first come first served basis. Prints are £60 each (pop art edition and noir edition), or £100 for the set of two for the first 20 orders. Black Dragon Press shop link is here where you can learn more about them, and many other gorgeous limited edition posters.

There it calls to her, a burning red beacon of life in the wasteland that was once Berlin. It’s a nightclub, but, as its name suggests, perhaps quite a lot more. Nelly (Nina Hoss) hopes her husband is working within; perhaps she hopes he’s not. Her close friend has already warned her to avoid him, but she’s been through too much trauma to extinguish her faith in the familiar. Left for dead at a concentration camp, her face was scarred beyond recognition. Her reconstructive surgery was not wholly successful; glancing her appearance in a broken mirror, she withdraws in shock. So much of the film hinges on how Hoss reacts, or doesn’t react, and this reflected glance sets up the stakes of the film – who is she now, and does her past have any bearing on her future?

These immediate postwar years, historically, centered around grief and rebuilding. Christian Petzold’s latest film, Phoenix, follows suit. With her entire extended family murdered, Nelly has inherited a good deal of money, enough not just to cover her extended hospital stay, but also to truly make a difference. Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) insists she travel to Palestine and help found a Jewish state, where they and their people can live safely and prosper. But Nelly isn’t ready to leave yet. The memory of her husband kept her going when all else was lost, and he must be found. But Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) too does not recognize her as anything more that a lookalike. He knows of his wife’s inheritance, and, believing her dead, that this stranger, so similar in appearance, can withdraw it for him. She plays along; maybe Lene is right, maybe he did betray her when she needed him most. Maybe he’ll reveal more to this stranger than he would to her. She makes feeble attempts to give herself away, never fully admitting the investigation.

Their interactions evolve rapidly, though Petzold never heightens the drama much above casually combative. Johnny believes their relationship to be only a brief one for mutual benefit (he has agreed to give her half of the reward); Nelly may, too, only be in it for a couple of weeks before shipping off to the Middle East. Our knowledge of the violence that effort will instigate hangs over its every mention. They escape the horrors of war only to dive into another. The effort to rebuild, to create something positive out of a catastrophe, is a collective human desire. Sometimes, though, that means breaking with the past. Nelly will sometimes yell “Johnny!” (Hoss’s voice breaking slightly, on the verge of exasperation or joy), sure he’ll recognize her through it. He does not; willfully? He doesn’t even ask how she knows to call him Johnny, and looks away when he tells her to stop doing so. Perhaps he just doesn’t care enough for this stranger to give her such answers; perhaps he’s avoiding the guilt of what he did to his wife. Zehrfeld plays a steel trap, allowing no indication of his thoughts or feelings, an act so many men perform in marriage. But it seems unfamiliar to Nelly, who’s left to mourn the loss of what they had, and of the man he once was, or at least who she believed him to be.

The film is haunted, with both the past and the unreal present. Nelly wanders the empty hospital ward with her face covered in bandages, touching memories encased in photographs, images that leap with life in her dreams. Her hotel feels like the height of luxury; every surface seems to glow (though the manager is quick to note they’re infested with flies). That club pulses with the energy of sin and vice in a world that has little other refuge. “If he’s lucky,” a busker says to Nelly when she asks where she might find her piano-playing husband, “He’s playing at one of the clubs. If he’s not, he’s playing the accordion on a corner.” Her best bet for finding a bustling club is in the American sector of Berlin, a city that once rewarded her, then imprisoned her, then left her for dead, and now has no place for her. Phoenix exists in a sort of limbo, between war and peace, poverty and wealth, marriage and independence, nationalism and individuality.

Yes, this deceptively simple film could be merely the first act of a larger tragedy; that Petzold finds so much within its confines is half its miracle. Tension is drawn from all quarters, some of which go unrevealed until they are resolved. Each conversation plays with unacknowledged, yet assumed and accepted, power. A man Nelly mistakes for her husband gropes her in the street, yet she doesn’t cry out – does she assume, after years in one form of imprisonment or another, that no one will help her? Is she right? Is this just her nature, to accept the rules others (this man, her husband, her friend) lay before her, or did the war teach her that? This film – this short, brilliant, seductive film that never announces itself as a major work but unfolds in absolute mastery – is too much for one viewing. I have glanced but a part of it.

Phoenix comes to theaters in limited release this weekend. It will roll out in the coming weeks and months.

Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t quite follow this one. In his 1957 review of the film for Cahiers du cinema (reprinted in the booklet accompanying this release), Jean-Luc Godard wrote that Forty Guns“is so rich in invention – despite an incomprehensible plot – and so bursting with daring conceptions that it reminds one of the extravagances of Abel Gance and Stroheim, or purely and simply of Murnau.” For a movie featuring a half-dozen standoffs, at least as many deaths, two musical numbers, and an honest-to-God tornado, nothing much seems to happen in Forty Guns. The tone and tenor of the thing feels as relaxed as Rio Bravo. I’ve seen it twice now, and viewed a few scenes here and there beyond that, and I still can’t quite reconcile the whole. But Godard’s right – it’s a hell of a thing to see.

It starts right at the opening, as one might expect with a Fuller picture. Griff Bonnell (Barry Sullivan), along with his brothers Wes (Gene Barry) and Chico (Robert Dix), are riding across the plain in a coach when a horde of rampaging gunslingers barrel past them on horseback. Leading the charge is a woman we’ll know later as Jessica Drummond (Barbara Stanwyck). In the wide shots, they seem to flow across the desert like a river, or a snake (perfect for widescreen), each movement Jessica makes affecting the way the rest ride. In tight shots, they seem fiercer than the tornado that will damn near kill Jessica midway through the film. These sensations will carry over to other forms of behavior as well. Jessica is something between a gang leader and a gender-reversed harem master; neither imply a great deal of empathy for those she commands, but both demand servitude, compliance, and, when ordered, apocalyptic force. Those who can’t get along will move along.

There’s romance, and quite a lot of talk of guns, and eventually both, once Wes starts courting Louvenia Spanger (Eve Brent), a local gunsmith who knows her way around a barrel. Jessica eventually finds her softer side through a violent tornado and Griff’s mighty arms. They share a love scene in a barn as simple and sexy as they come, the camera descending from the rafters as the two come down from the high of their whirlwind. Stanwyck, by this point, had little to prove, but this cheapie western (shot in only ten days) gives her one of her most iconic roles, finally ascending to the place of command for which her most famous characters – in Baby Face, in Double Indemnity– seemed destined. She relishes it so much, commanding her screen time to such a degree that her spirit haunts her physical absences, it’s almost a shame she needed a softer side at all. Almost.

Masters of Cinema wasn’t quite the first company to get this to Blu-ray – a French company beat them by a few weeks – but for English-speaking consumers, it should prove the more attractive offer. Judging by available screenshots, the transfers seem to be of more or less equal virtue, and MoC certainly has them beat on the supplements. The video quality leaves a bit to be desired, I’ll admit. No source is mentioned for the transfer, but it has the hallmarks of a studio job – grain is wildly uneven, sometimes looking spot-on and adding beautiful texture, sometimes stripped entirely from the resultantly-waxy image. Contrast is way overdone to give it a “dynamic” appearance, in the process demolishing nearly all shadow detail. The tornado scene, a flurry of sand and twigs and all manner of debris, seems (thankfully) completely untouched, probably due to the labor involved in distinguishing the dirt flying around in the film from the dirt popping up on the film. It’s the only scene in the film to still carry this sort of damage, but it is also, not coincidentally, the richest and most authentic section of this transfer. Here, you can finally see some depth to the plain, and feel the density of the world. Screencaps come from DVD Beaver.

While the supplements may seem few and meager, I’m pleased to report they feel like neither. Sure, on the disc we only get a video piece with a French scholar (ported over from an old DVD release, I’d guess, judging from the quality) and an audio interview with Fuller, but what they doesn’t tell you is that the audio interview is, in fact, 80 minutes of him joyously interacting with an audience and – even better – is layered over the film as a separate audio track and a de facto commentary. While one would become overly strained trying to tie directly Fuller’s comments from 1969 with the underlying progression of the picture, the totality of listening to this in such a way gives one an appreciation and application for Fuller’s theories and experiences. Home video companies too often let audio interviews simply play over their menu screen, or maybe a succession of stills, but utilizing it as a commentary track is an immensely rewarding choice, one I hope MoC, and others, will continue.

The French scholar piece is also very good, if a little overly busy in the production. The booklet provides the aforementioned review by Godard, as well as an essay by Murielle Joudet and a very entertaining excerpt from Fuller’s acclaimed autobiography A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking. Best bit? “For Chrissakes, my gunman had to think about box-office receipts before he decided to pull the trigger!” Well, that or him mentioning the time he set his brother up on a blind date with Marilyn Monroe. All of that is packed into a dense 36 pages; again, MoC has made tremendous use of what may seem like a rather small array.

All that has turned this disc, with an only-decent transfer of not-my-favorite Sam Fuller film into something of a must-have, an outstanding exploration into Fuller’s working methods by way of one of his most expedited productions.

This podcast focuses on Criterion’s Eclipse Series of DVDs. Hosts David Blakeslee and Trevor Berrett give an overview of each box and offer their perspectives on the unique treasures they find inside. In this episode, David and Trevor conclude their two-part discussion of Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave.

About the films:

Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless directors—including eventual Oscar winners Miloš Forman and Ján Kadár—began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state. A defining work was the 1966 omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which introduced five of the movement’s essential voices: Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm. This series presents that title, along with five other crucial works that followed close on its heels, one from each of those filmmakers—some dazzlingly experimental, some arrestingly realistic, all singular expressions from a remarkable time and place.

Some filmmakers make pictures that are hard to find descriptors for. However, some filmmakers simply make cinema that is as brilliant as it is defiantly unclassifiable. Pedro Costa is one of those very filmmakers. The Portuguese auteur has been churning out some of cinema’s greatest post-neo-realist pictures since the late 1980s, looking at the world that is lived in by those on the margins of society. Be it his Criterion-approved Fontainhas pictures or his latest film, Horse Money, Costa is not only one of today’s most important world filmmakers, but he is still as vital and defiant today as he was when he began his illustrious career.

Horse Money is the director’s newest picture (opening Friday in New York via Cinema Guild), and it brings us back to a world any Costa supporter will instantly recognize. Ostensibly a sequel of sorts to his masterpiece, Colossal Youth, Horse Money once again introduces us to an aging and weak Cape Verdean immigrant, now at the end of his life, known to us as Ventura. That’s ostensibly as much plot as one can truly describe. Ventura is seen, at first, as nothing more than a man at home in the shadows of a destitute slum, and we watch as he takes an almost nightmarish journey into what appears to be various lived in memories of his life.

Costa’s work may be hard to describe, but that’s simply due to the fact that he’s not quite dealing in purely cinematic language. Throughout his career, and very much so with this latest work, Costa’s camera is static, the lighting almost noir like in its use of contrast and the inkiest of blacks. Scholars will tell you he’s the leader of modern neo-realism, and they’d be spot on. Very much rooted in the neo-realist movement that his career has followed, Costa’s films could be mistaken for reels of still photographs. Beautifully framed with precision and allowing for the contrast-heavy photography to give the film a feverish, nightmarish sense of vitality, the director proves to be as assured in his direction as he has ever been. There’s one scene in particular, which sees our lead encounter a soldier, or a living statue of a soldier actually, which is as definitive a moment in Costa’s canon that it becomes one of the most haunting and vital moments you’ll see on screen this year.

That all being said, the film is also a heady piece of thematic work. Very much playing in the same thematic ground as previous Costa pictures, Horse Money is not only a neo-realist film in its aesthetic. While the narrative itself is loose and almost surreal, the central themes are pertinent, seeing Costa coming to terms with a state that has failed its citizens. The static camera allows the viewer to become fully engrossed in the world he has set for them, and while the photography may give the film an otherworldly, haunted slum type feel, there is such a stark sense of reality that it makes the politically tinged thematic work come to life. The performances here are also fantastic, with the film resting squarely on Ventura’s shoulders. And as seen in Colossal Youth, he’s an actor able to carry the weight. A quiet, and yet deeply troubled performance, Ventura is a revelation here, turning in a performance that is so quietly sad that it turns Horse Money into one of the year’s most resonant dramas.

Ultimately, what Costa has crafted here is a nightmare about a state that’s left an entire population behind. Breathtakingly crafted and lushly shot, the film once again finds Costa at the top of his game, a game that may be the most powerful in modern world cinema. There are too few voices as assured and focused as his. And even fewer as powerful.

The Criterion Collection, as a brand, puts as much love and effort into their design work and artistic choices as they do the restoration of any given seemingly-lost classic they’ve decided to drop on the film world in their DVD/Blu-ray releases. Giving rise to artists like the man behind any of your favorite posters, Neil Kellerhouse, or giving shine to beloved classical artists like Yuko Shimizu, the almighty C has given the world gorgeous posters and lavishly designed home video releases since their inception.

And then they met acclaimed artist Takashi Murakami.

One of today’s most imaginative and singular graphic artists, Murakami has gone from the art world and entered the film world with his debut picture, entitled Jellyfish Eyes. With a narrative that has its roots in issues facing his native Japan today, it is a film that not only brings with it a great deal of anticipation, but the expectations that come with having Janus Films as a distributor, and ultimately The Criterion Collection as the home video label that will be bringing it to homes domestically.

There are truly few artists quite as prolific today as Murakami. Launching his career as a self-described “superflat” artist (ostensibly art inspired heavily by the works of anime artists that both mixes the hyper-cartoonish energy of anime within the framework of classic art), he has become not only a groundbreaking voice in the Japanese art scene, but has made waves here stateside, even getting his own line of Vans tennis shoes. He’s a very popular and well respected artist, but this film is something entirely new from Murakami, something even more vital, and arguably even more bizarre.

Jellyfish Eyes is a tough nut to crack. In many ways a post-Fukushima take on a narrative like the one found in various video games including, but not limited to, Pokemon, Jellyfish Eyes introduces us to a boy by the name of Masashi, who is having a rough time with this whole growing up thing. Following the death of his father, he moves to the country with his mother, only to meet a creature that is a flying jellyfish that he goes on to name Kurage-bo. However, as he begins to share his time with Kurage-bo, he discovers that he’s not the only one with this special friend, finding out that various children at his school have also made friends with different creatures of varied sizes and shapes. What follows is a story about childhood, that touches on things ranging from bullying to the state of Japan following the devastating Fukushima disaster.

Ultimately, the star of the film is Murakami, the stylist. Aesthetically, the film is a blend of live action and animation, using CGI to bring to life a myriad of characters ranging from a flying octopus to a Sailor Moon-esque fighter all as the best friends of its child leads. Murakami’s camera is relatively assured for a first time filmmaker, and his handle of tone is quite superb. The action set pieces here are absolutely superb, be it a beating our lead suffers at the hands of a group of bullies (the only time the film ever reaches for anything resembling a real emotion) or the grand final fight that concludes the picture, there is some really great action direction here. For an artist who deals in classic, static art, Murakami has a great hand when it comes to action, something one wouldn’t expect. That being said, its in support of a film that doesn’t have any real interest delving below the surface level it sets for the viewer.

Jellyfish Eyes is a film with grand themes behind its eyes, or at least it seems that way. Dealing in the same realm as any great film about childhood, the film gives us a surrealist look at a child’s search for a place in the world, and someone to share it with. More Where The Wild Things Are than Godzilla, this is where the film begins to unravel.

Using the Fukushima disaster as nothing more than window dressing, the film doesn’t lack the thematic power of great Japanese cinema of this ilk, and the sci-fi tilt the film takes doesn’t allow for much emotional connection to the actual narrative. At times bewilderingly pretentious and at others decidedly superficial, the film is a wonderful time for children the same age as its characters, but will leave many viewers scratching their heads, looking for something to grasp to. For a visual artist as singular as Murakami, the film gets cartoonishly sterile photography from Yasutaka Nagano that makes the proceedings feel as weighty as a glorified episode of any Nickelodeon TV series and Murakami’s character design feels far too grounded. We find our lead character in the midst of what should be genuine crisis. His father has passed on, and moving to a new city and ultimately a new school is a concept that is not only genuinely frightening, but carries with it such deep existential angst that it deeply troubles many children. However, what follows is a slight and in many ways haphazardly put together look at youth and the experience of growing up that wants to carry with it greater weight with the use of a horrific disaster as a launching point.

Overall, die hard fans of Japanese cinema and coming-of-age pictures will find a few nuggets to like here and there. The action here is solid, and the fight sequences are few and far between but are really well paced and shot. That being said, Murakami’s debut film lacks weight despite having a great disaster at its very core. It will be quite interesting to see what type of release this is given from The Criterion Collection, when it ultimately arrives.